Accounting in the Central Sudan in the Early Nineteenth Century

• Published in: African economic history Vol. 41; pp. 19 - 31
• Main Authors: Addoun, Yacine Daddi, Lockhart, Jamie Bruce, Lovejoy, Paul E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Madison African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison 01-01-2013; University of Wisconsin Press
• Subjects: 19th century; Accounting; Budgets; Cash; Cash payments; Coffee; Consuls; Cost estimates; Cost of living; Debt; Expenditures; Horses; Loans; Merchants; Payments; Prices; Receipts; Slaves; Spending; Wages; West Africa
• ISSN: 0145-2258; 2163-9108

Documents relating to accounting in Muslim West Africa are rare.1 In this article, we include the surviving accounts of Captain Hugh Clapperton, who travelled to the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, first in 1824 and then to Oyo and the Sokoto Caliphate in 1827 (Appendix A). Clapperton's papers are important in terms of what they reveal about methods of accounting and prices, and mechanisms for recovering outstanding debts. These accounts and related documents from the Clapperton papers provide evidence of the use of Arabic in keeping accounts in the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno. There is also a budget that reveals the cost of living for a period of three weeks in Sokoto for a household of a visiting dignitary, which is roughly similar to that of a prosperous merchant. There is other material that provides additional evidence of the cost of daily living along the routes into the interior of West Africa in the 1820s. There are also records of a court case in Borno relating to efforts to recover funds that had been loaned to an official who subsequently died (Appendix B). Reprinted by permission of University of Wisconsin, African Studies Program